


the hollow of your thigh

by loose_canon



Category: Abrahamic Religions, All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Jacob Wrestling the Angel AU, M/M, Rating will change, Tags will be added, loose interpretation...real loose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 14:23:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18096056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loose_canon/pseuds/loose_canon
Summary: HIATUSIt's been six years since Nathaniel's mother died at the hands of his father. Now that his father is free again, Nathaniel is hell-bent on getting his revenge. But what Nathaniel doesn't know is that an unearthly presence has watched him from the shadows for years, waiting for this precise moment. That is, until a beautiful stranger blocks Nathaniel's path, and Nathaniel must wrestle the angel for more than a name.Or, the Jacob and the angel AU you never knew you needed





	the hollow of your thigh

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is what happens when you want to make the homoerotic subtext of angelic encounters into text-text. Enjoy. :)
> 
> Unbeta'd, please forgive any mistakes!

Nathaniel was in familiar territory. It was the end of summer and the moon was so bright Nathaniel thought he could see his own shadow, though what hung above him was a waxing sickle, sickly in its too-white shine. The night felt colder than it should have at the edge of summer. The wind rushed over Nathaniel in brisk breaths. He was in a field, the damp musk of dirt seeping through his thinning tennis shoes to his soles, mist hanging just above him but not low enough to be within reach. His stomach twisted as he walked closer to the place where his mother had died. Nathaniel hadn’t been there to see it; his mother had told him to run up ahead, to run and never stop. Nathaniel had obeyed her commands for years, since he was fourteen. He was twenty now, and still alone, or so he thought. The sweat that beaded in the dipped line of his spine was cool as Nathaniel crossed a copse of grass and approached the edge of a brook, still babbling pleasantly in the dark. Behind him, a few miles to the north, was an ordinary town, street lamps watching the black asphalt and occasional car beneath their orange gaze, houses softly packed with the unconscious and the insomniac. Here, though, Nathaniel was exposed under the moon’s strange light. He had to decide.

Nathaniel bent to sit by the thread of water. The rocks were still wrapped in the thinnest veil of warmth from the summer day. He laid out on their uneven surface and sighed. The only stars visible beyond the moon’s odd glow and the mist suspended above him were probably satellites, anyway. But Nathaniel had seen enough of the stars, had spent his due wandering beneath them, following his mother’s last commands through cities and skirting the edges of suburbia. He wasn’t interested in the skies, only in what was in front of him. Nathaniel closed his eyes and let his mind wander.

 

_He was young, too young yet to understand what was really going on, why they were running. There was his mother, out ahead, frantically waving him to her side._

_“What are you doing?” she hissed._

_Nathaniel stumbled toward her, the skin of his legs red-hot from hours of movement, his joints warm and angry._

_His mother clenched the hair at the back of his head and dragged him forward. They rushed headlong. “Don’t you let him win, Abram. Don’t you dare.”_

_“Mom, what are you talking about?”_

_“Repeat the rules back to me. Do it now.”_

_If Nathaniel didn’t know Mary so well he’d think a twinge of pain had briefly pulled through her face, but she stared forward as they forged ahead, intent and determined and regal as ever._

_“Don’t stop,” Nathaniel recited between pants, “Be anyone but yourself—” He almost tripped on a knot of grass but quickly recovered his balance. “Trust no one.”_

_“That’s right, my love,” she whispered, then abruptly pulled him to the side and through a dense pocket of bushes. Nathaniel couldn’t help but stare at his mother now. Mary almost never used terms of endearment with him. She jerked them to a standstill behind the rotted remains of a would-be barn. He felt her hands spin him to face her completely and then her fingers—strong, sometimes cruel, but always strong—cupped either side of his face. Her brown eyes glittered and her jaw clenched up with determination and something else Nathaniel couldn’t identify as she looked him in the face. “You will make it. For both of us.”_

_Nathaniel tried to wiggle out of her hold, but his mother didn’t let go. “Mom, what are you talking about?”_

_"Go,” she said softly and dropped her hands. He didn’t move. Mary turned her son back around, her hands on his shoulders one last time, and gave a small shove. “Go.” This time it was a command._

_Nathaniel started forward, craning his neck to look back at his mother._

_“Go!” she nearly shouted, voice equal parts angry and anguished. Something in Nathaniel’s mind jumped, and adrenaline coursed through his veins. Then he was running in earnest, fear widening his eyes and warping the silence behind the passing brush into strange voices. He knew it wasn’t safe. He knew he had to leave. Mom..._

 

Nathaniel’s father—Nathan, a name barely worth repeating—had murdered Nathaniel’s mother that night, and would have murdered Nathaniel, too, if he hadn’t been crashing through the vegetation on his mother’s orders, across the little brook, and toward the plain. The metallic scent of fear was in the air. Nathaniel could almost taste it on his tongue.

In the years after Nathaniel’s escape, Nathan had been sentenced to prison for aggravated assault. But word had reached Nathaniel that his father had been released, out on early probation for good behavior, a beast back in the wild, and now Nathaniel was going to find him. And end him.

Nathaniel stood and wiped the dirt violently from his clothes. Then again he began to walk, compelled by long-held anger, cultivated and refined to the point of a dagger, the edge of a knife.

  

But Nathaniel was not alone. In fact, he never had been. Though he moved with animal grace, steps quieted with practice, eyes furtive, blending into the background as much as any human could, the angel saw him. Had always seen Nathaniel, in fact. The angel smiled to itself, an expression not of joy or malice, but certainty. Its time had come.

In the shadows, the figure of a man coalesced. Leftover phantoms of numerous eyes and wings tucked away and settled into human proportions. And in the blink of an eye, he was material, flesh. The transformation was convincing: there stood a human figure, ordinary though not unattractive. But then, this man’s hair shone perhaps a shade too strong in the night; and his eyes, well, there was no way to conceal their strangeness, dark amber flecked with green. At once too intense and too still.

The angel took its first steps in human form and moved over the ground in eerie grace, his charge only a few minutes ahead of him. Wary owls hooted as he moved by. The air dropped into sudden coolness, and even the snakes, lulled into false drowsiness by the chill, shivered at the man’s passing. Nature recognizes nature, and what had arrived was not shaped of the earth, but something else entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> more to come soon!! thank you for reading! <3
> 
> follow me on tumblr @ sapphicrenee! (and chat me up about gay angels, obviously)


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